VOLUME VIII SLICE VIII Dubner to Dyeing (continued 8)

In the autumn of 1505 Dürer journeyed for a second time to Venice, and stayed there until the spring of 1507. The occasion of this journey has been erroneously stated by Vasari. Dürer’s engravings, both on copper and wood, had by this time attained great popularity both north and south of the Alps, and had begun to be copied by various hands, among others by the celebrated Marcantonio of Bologna, then in his youth. According to Vasari, Marcantonio, in copying Dürer’s series of the Little Passion on wood, had imitated the original monogram, and Dürer, indignant at this fraud, set out for Italy in order to protect his rights, and having lodged a complaint against Marcantonio before the signory of Venice, carried his point so far that Marcantonio was forbidden in future to add the monogram of Dürer to copies taken after his works. This account will not bear examination. Chronological and other proofs show that if such a suit was fought at all, it must have been in connexion with another set of Dürer’s woodcuts, the first seventeen of the Life of the Virgin. Dürer himself, a number of whose familiar letters written from Venice to his friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg are preserved, makes no mention of anything of the kind. Nevertheless some such grievance may possibly have been among the causes which determined his journey. Other causes, of which we have explicit record, were an outbreak of sickness at Nuremberg; Dürer’s desire, which in fact was realized, of finding a good market for the proceeds of his art; and the prospect, also realized, of a commission for an important picture from the German community settled at Venice, who had lately caused an exchange and warehouse—the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi—to be built on the Grand Canal, and who were now desirous to dedicate a picture in the church of St Bartholomew. The picture painted by Dürer on this commission was the “Adoration of the Virgin,” better known as the “Feast of Rose Garlands”; it was subsequently acquired by the emperor Rudolf II., and carried as a thing beyond price upon men’s shoulders to Vienna; it now exists in a greatly injured state in the monastery of Strahow at Prague. It shows the pope and emperor, with a lute-playing angel between them, kneeling to right and left of the enthroned Virgin and Child, who crown them with rose garlands, with a multitude of other kneeling saints disposed with free symmetry in the background, and farther in the background portraits of the donor and the painter, and a flutter of wreath-carrying cherubs in the air. Of all Dürer’s works, it is the one in which he most deliberately rivalled the combined splendour and playfulness of certain phases of Italian art. The Venetian painters assured him, he says, that they had never seen finer colours. They were doubtless too courteous to add that fine colours do not make fine colouring. Even in its present ruined state, it is apparent that in spite of the masterly treatment of particular passages, such as the robe of the pope, Dürer still lacked a true sense of harmony and tone-relations, and that the effect of his work must have been restless and garish beside that of a master like the aged Bellini. That veteran showed the German visitor the most generous courtesy, and Dürer still speaks of him as the best in painting (“der pest im gemell”) in spite of his advanced years. A similar festal intention in design and colouring, with similar mastery in passages and even less sense of harmonious relations in the whole, is apparent in a second important picture painted by Dürer at Venice, “The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch,” formerly in the collection of Lord Lothian and now at Berlin. A “Christ disputing with the Doctors” of the same period, in the Barberini Gallery at Rome, is recorded to have cost the painter only five days’ labour, and is an unsatisfying and ill-composed congeries of heads and hands, both of such strenuous character and individuality as here and there to pass into caricature. The most satisfying of Dürer’s paintings done in Venice are the admirable portrait of a young man at Hampton Court (the same sitter reappears in the “Feast of Rose Garlands”), and two small pieces, one the head of a brown Italian girl modelled and painted with real breadth and simplicity, formerly in the collection of Mr Reginald Cholmondeley and now at Berlin, and the small and very striking little “Christ Crucified” with the figure relieved against the night sky, which is preserved in the Dresden Gallery and has served as model and inspiration to numberless later treatments of the theme. An interesting, rather fantastic, portrait of a blonde girl wearing a wide cap, now in the Berlin museum, is dated 1507 and may have been done in the early months of that year at Venice. It is possible, though not certain, that to this date also belongs the famous portrait of himself at Munich bearing a false signature and date, 1500; in this it has been lately shown that the artist modified his own lineaments according to a preconceived scheme of facial proportion, so that it must be taken as an ideal rather than a literal presentment of himself to posterity as he appeared in the flower of his early middle age. From Venice Dürer kept up a continuous correspondence, which has been published, with his bosom friend Pirkheimer at Nuremberg. He tells of the high position he holds among the Venetians; of the jealousy shown him by some of the meaner sort of native artist; of the honour and wealth in which he might live if he would consent to abandon home for Italy; of the northern winter, and how he knows that after his return it will set him shivering for the south. Yet he resisted all seductions and was in Nuremberg again before the summer of 1507. First, it seems, he had made an excursion to Bologna, having intended to take Mantua on the way, in order to do homage to the old age of that Italian master, Andrea Mantegna, from whose work he had himself in youth learned the most. But the death of Mantegna prevented his purpose.

From the spring of 1507 until the summer of 1520, Dürer was again a settled resident in his native town. Except the brilliant existences of Raphael at Rome and of Rubens at Antwerp and Madrid, the annals of art present the spectacle of few more honoured or more fortunate careers. His reputation had spread all over Europe. From Flanders to Rome his distinction was acknowledged, and artists of less invention, among them some of the foremost on both sides of the Alps, were not ashamed to borrow from his work this or that striking combination or expressive type. He was on terms of friendship or friendly communication with all the first masters of the age, and Raphael held himself honoured in exchanging drawings with Dürer. In his own country, all orders of men, from the emperor Maximilian down, delighted to honour him; and he was the familiar companion of chosen spirits among the statesmen, humanists and reformers of the new age. The burgher life of even Nuremberg, the noblest German city, seems narrow, quaint and harsh beside the grace and opulence and poetical surroundings of Italian life in the same and the preceding generation. The great cities of Flanders also, with their world-wide commerce and long-established eminence in the arts, presented aspects of more splendid civic pomp and luxury. But among its native surroundings the career of Dürer stands out with an aspect of ideal elevation and decorum which is its own. His temper and life seem to have been remarkably free from all that was jarring, jealous and fretful; unless, indeed, we are to accept as true the account of his wife’s character which represents her as having been no fit mate for him, but an incorrigible shrew and skinflint. The name of Agnes Dürer was for centuries used to point a moral, and among the unworthy wives of great men the wife of Dürer became almost as notorious as the wife of Socrates. The source of the traditions to her discredit is to be found in a letter written a few years after Dürer’s death by his life-long intimate, Willibald Pirkheimer, who accuses her of having plagued her husband to death by her meanness, made him overwork himself for money’s sake, and given his latter days no peace. No doubt there must have been some kind of foundation for Pirkheimer’s charges; and it is to be noted that neither in Dürer’s early correspondence with this intimate friend, nor anywhere in his journals, does he use any expressions of tenderness or affection for his wife, only speaking of her as his housemate and of her helping in the sale of his prints, &c. That he took her with him on his journey to the Netherlands shows at any rate that there can have been no acute estrangement. And it is fair to remember in her defence that Pirkheimer when he denounced her was old, gouty and peevish, and that the immediate occasion of his outbreak against his friend’s widow was a fit of anger because she had not let him have a pair of antlers—a household ornament much prized in those days—to which he fancied himself entitled out of the property left by Dürer. We have evidence that after her husband’s death Agnes Dürer behaved with generosity to his brothers.

The thirteen or fourteen years of Dürer’s life between his return from Venice and his journey to the Netherlands (spring 1507-midsummer 1520) can best be divided according to the classes of work with which, during successive divisions of the period, he was principally occupied. The first five years, 1507-1511, are pre-eminently the painting years of his life. In them, working with infinite preliminary pains, as a vast number of extant drawings and studies testify, he produced what have been accounted his four capital works in painting, besides several others of minor importance. The first is the “Adam and Eve” dated 1507, in which both attitudes and proportions are as carefully calculated, though on a somewhat different scheme, as in the engraving of 1504. Two versions of the picture exist, one in Florence at the Pitti palace, the other, which is generally allowed to be the original, at Madrid. To 1508 belongs the life-sized “Virgin with the Iris,” a piece remarkable for the fine romantic invention of its background, but plainly showing the hand of an assistant, perhaps Hans Baldung, in its execution: the best version is in the Cook collection at Richmond, an inferior one in the Rudolphinum at Prague. In 1508 Dürer returned to a subject which he had already treated in an early woodcut, the “Massacre of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia.” The picture, painted for the elector Frederick of Saxony, is now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna; the overcrowded canvas (into which Dürer has again introduced his own portrait as a spectator alongside of the elector) is full of striking and animated detail, but fails to make any great impression on the whole, and does not do justice to the improved sense of breadth and balance in design, of clearness and dignity in composition, which the master had undoubtedly brought back with him from his second visit to Italy. In 1509 followed the “Assumption of the Virgin” with the Apostles gathered about her tomb, a rich altarpiece with figures of saints and portraits of the donor and his wife in the folding wings, executed for Jacob Heller, a merchant of Frankfort, in 1509. This altarpiece was afterwards replaced at Frankfort (all except the portraits of the donors, which remained behind) by a copy, while the original was transported to Munich, where it perished by fire in 1674. The copy, together with the many careful and highly finished preparatory studies for the heads, limbs and draperies which have been preserved, shows that this must have been the one of Dürer’s pictures in which he best combined the broader vision and simpler habits of design which had impressed him in the works of Italian art with his own inherited and ingrained love of unflinchingly grasped fact and rugged, accentuated character. In 1511 was completed another famous painting, multitudinous in the number of its figures though of very moderate dimensions, the “Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints,” a subject commissioned for a chapel dedicated to All Saints in an almshouse for decayed tradesmen at Nuremberg, and now at the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. Nothing can exceed the fulness and variety of invention, or the searching force and precision of detail in this picture; nor does it leave so much to desire as several of the master’s other paintings in point of colour-harmony and pleasurable general effect.

In the meantime Dürer had added a few to the number of his line-engravings and had completed the two woodcut series of the Great Passion, begun about 1498-1499, and the Life of the Virgin. The new subjects compared with the old show some falling off in dramatic stress and intensity of expression, but on the other hand a marked gain in largeness of design and clearness of composition. In 1511 these two works were brought out for the first time, and the Apocalypse series in a second edition; and for the next three years, 1511-1514, engraving both on wood and copper, but especially the latter, took the first place among Dürer’s activities. Besides such fine single woodcuts as the “Mass of St Gregory,” the “St Christopher,” the “St Jerome,” and two Holy Families of 1511, Dürer published in the same year the most numerous and popularly conceived of all his woodcut series, that known from the dimensions of its thirty-seven subjects as the “Little Passion” on wood; and in the next year, 1512, a set of fifteen small copper-engravings on the same theme, the “Little Passion” on copper. Both of these must represent the labour of several preceding years: one or two of the “Little Passion” plates, dating back as far as 1507, prove that this series at least had been as long as five years in his mind. In thus repeating over and over on wood and copper nearly the same incidents of the Passion, or again in rehandling them in yet another medium, as in the highly finished series of drawings known as the “Green Passion” in the Albertina at Vienna, Dürer shows an inexhaustible variety of dramatic and graphic invention, and is never betrayed into repeating an identical action or motive.

In 1513 and 1514 appeared the three most famous of Dürer’s works in copper-engraving, “The Knight and Death” (or simply “The Knight,” as he himself calls it, 1513), the “Melancolia” and the “St Jerome in his Study” (both 1514). These are the masterpieces of the greatest mind which ever expressed itself in this form of art. Like other masterpieces, they suggest much more than they clearly express, and endless meanings have been, rightly or wrongly, read into them by posterity. Taken together as a group, they have been supposed to be three out of an uncompleted series designed to illustrate the four “temperaments” and complexions of men. Again, more reasonably, they have been taken as types severally of the moral, the intellectual and the theological virtues. The idea at the bottom of the “Knight and Death” seems to be a combination of the Christian knight of Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani with the type, traditional in medieval imagery, of the pilgrim on his way through the world. The imaginative force of the presentation, coming from a man of Dürer’s powers, is intense; but what consciously occupied him most may well have been the problem how to draw accurately the proportions and action of a horse in motion. This problem he here solves for the first time, with the help of an Italian example: at least his design so closely repeats that of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous and early destroyed equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza that we must certainly suppose him to have seen either the model itself or such a drawing of it as is still preserved by Leonardo’s own hand. The face of the rider seems to recall that of the statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni at Venice; for the armour Dürer had recourse to an old drawing of his own, signed and dated in 1498. The “Melancolia,” numbered “1” as though intended to be the first of a series, with its brooding winged genius sitting dejectedly amidst a litter of scientific instruments and symbols, is hard to interpret in detail, but impossible not to recognize in general terms as an embodiment of the spirit of intellectual research (the student’s “temperament” was supposed to be one with the melancholic), resting sadly from its labours in a mood of lassitude and defeat. Comparatively cheerful beside these two is the remaining subject of the student saint reading in his chamber, with his dog and domestic lion resting near him, and a marvellous play of varied surface and chequered light on the floor and ceiling of his apartment and on all the objects which it contains. Besides these three masterpieces of line-engraving, the same years, 1512-1515, found Dürer occupied with his most important experiments in etching, both in dry-point (“The Holy Family and Saints” and the “St Jerome in the Wilderness”) and with the acid bath. At the same time he was more taken up than ever, as is proved by the contents of a sketch-book at Dresden, with mathematical and anatomical studies on the proportions and structure of the human frame. A quite different kind of study, that of the postures of wrestlers in action, is illustrated by a little-known series of drawings, still of the same period, at Vienna. Almost the only well-authenticated painting of the time is a “Virgin and Child” in the Imperial Museum at Vienna. The portraits of the emperors Charles the Great and Sigismund (1512), in their present state at any rate, can hardly be recognized as being by the master’s hand. An interval of five years separates the Vienna “Madonna” from the two fine heads of the apostles Philip and James in the Uffizi at Florence, the pair of boys’ heads painted in tempera on linen in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the “Madonna with the Pink” at Augsburg, and the portrait of Wolgemut at Munich, all of 1516. Among engravings of the same time are three Madonnas, the apostles Thomas and Paul, a bagpiper and two peasants dancing, and three or four experiments in etching on plates of iron and zinc. In wood-engraving his energies were almost entirely given to bearing a part—which modern research has proved to have been not nearly so large as was traditionally supposed—in the great decorative schemes commanded by the Emperor Max in his own honour, and devised and carried out by a whole corps of men of letters and artists: namely, the Triumphal Gate and the Triumphal March or Procession. A third and smaller commemorative design, the Triumphal Car, originally designed to form part of the second but in the end issued separately, was entirely Dürer’s own work. A far more successful and attractive effort of his genius in the same service is to be found in the marginal decorations done by him in pen for the emperor’s prayer-book. This unequalled treasure of German art and invention has in later times been broken up, the part executed by Dürer being preserved at Munich, the later sheets, which were decorated by other hands, having been transported to Besançon. Dürer’s designs, drawn with the pen in pale lilac, pink and green, show an inexhaustible richness of invention and an airy freedom and playfulness of hand beyond what could be surmised from the sternness of those studies which he made direct from life and nature. They range from subjects of the homeliest and most mirthful realism to others serious and devout, and from literal or almost literal transcripts of natural form to the most whimsically abstract combinations of linear pattern and tendril and flourish.

All these undertakings for his imperial friend and patron were stopped by the emperor’s death in 1519. A portrait-drawing by the master done at Augsburg a few months previously, one of his finest works, served him as the basis both of a commemorative picture and a woodcut. Other paintings of this and the succeeding year we may seek for in vain; but in line engravings we have four more Madonnas, two St Christophers, one or two more peasant subjects, the well-known St Anthony with the view of Nuremberg in the background, and the smaller of the two portraits of the Cardinal-Elector of Mainz; and in wood-engraving several fine heraldic pieces, including the arms of Nuremberg.

In the summer of 1520 the desire of Dürer to secure from Maximilian’s successors a continuance of the patronage and privileges granted during his lifetime, together with an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg, gave occasion to the master’s fourth and last journey from home. Together with his wife and her maid he set out in July for the Netherlands in order to be present at the coronation of the young emperor Charles V., and if possible to conciliate the good graces of the all-powerful regent Margaret. In the latter part of his aim Dürer was but partially successful. His diary of his travels enables us to follow his movements almost day by day. He journeyed by the Rhine, Cologne, and thence by road to Antwerp, where he was handsomely received, and lived in whatever society was most distinguished, including that of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Besides his written notes, interesting traces of his travels exist in the shape of the scattered leaves of a sketch-book filled with delicate drawings in silver-point, chiefly views of places and studies of portrait and costume. Several of his finest portrait-drawings in chalk or charcoal, including those of his brother artists Lucas Van Leyden and Bernard Van Orley, as well as one of two fine portrait paintings of men, belong to the period of this journey. So does a magnificent drawing of a head of a nonagenarian with a flowing beard who sat to him at Antwerp, together with a picture from the same head in the character of St Jerome; the drawing is now at Vienna, the picture at Lisbon. Dürer’s interest and curiosity, both artistic and personal, were evidently stimulated by his travels in the highest degree. Besides going to Aachen for the coronation, he made excursions down the Rhine from Cologne to Nijmwegen, and back overland by ’s Hertogenbosch; to Brussels; to Bruges and Ghent; and to Zealand with the object of seeing a natural curiosity, a whale reported ashore. The vivid account of this last expedition given in his diary contrasts with the usual dry entries of interviews and disbursements. A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending—without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer—Dürer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.

On the 12th of July 1521 Dürer reached home again. Drawings of this and the immediately following years prove that on his return his mind was full of schemes for religious pictures. For a great group of the Madonna surrounded with saints there are extant two varying sketches of the whole composition and a number of finished studies for individual heads and figures. Less abundant, but still sufficient to prove the artist’s intention, are the preliminary studies to a picture of the Crucifixion. There exist also fine drawings for a “Lamentation over the body of Christ,” an “Adoration of the Kings,” and a “March to Calvary”; of the last-named composition, besides the beautiful and elaborate pen-and-ink drawing at Florence, three still more highly-wrought versions in green monochrome exist; whether any of them are certainly by the artist’s own hand is matter of debate. But no religious paintings on the grand scale, corresponding to these drawings of 1521-1524, were ever carried out; perhaps partly because of the declining state of the artist’s health, but more because of the degree to which he allowed his time and thoughts to be absorbed in the preparation of his theoretical works on geometry and perspective, proportion and fortification. Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo’s genius for scientific speculation and divination, Dürer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of nature and natural appearances. He himself attached great importance to his studies in this kind; his learned friends expected him to give their results to the world; which accordingly, though having little natural gift or felicity in verbal expression, he laboured strenuously to do. The consequence was that in the last and ripest years of his life he produced as an artist comparatively little. In painting there is the famous portrait of Hieronymus Holtzschuher at Berlin, in which the personality and general aspect of the sitter assert themselves with surprising power. This and the Antwerp head of Jerome are perhaps the most striking examples of Dürer’s power of forcing into subordination to a general impression such a multiplicity of insistent detail as would have smothered any weaker conception than his. No other hand could have ventured to render the hair and beard of a sitter, as it was the habit of this inveterate linearist to do, not by indication of masses, but by means of an infinity of single lines swept, with a miraculous certainty and fineness of touch, in the richest and most intricate of decorative curves. To the same period belong a pleasing but somewhat weak “Madonna and Child” at Florence; and finally, still in the same year 1526, the two famous panels at Munich embodying the only one of the great religious conceptions of the master’s later years which he lived to finish. These are the two pairs of saints, St John with St Peter in front and St Paul with St Mark in the background. The John and Paul are conceived and executed really in the great style, with a commanding nobility and force alike in the character of the heads, the attitudes, and the sweep of draperies; they represent the highest achievement of early German art in painting. In copper-engraving Dürer’s work during the same years was confined entirely to portraits, those of the cardinal-elector of Mainz (“The Great Cardinal”), Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, Willibald Pirkheimer, Melanchthon and Erasmus. To the tale of his woodcuts, besides a few illustrations to his book on measurements (that is, geometry and perspective), and on fortification, he only added one Holy Family and one portrait, that of his friend Eoban Hesse. Of his theoretical books, he only succeeded in getting two finished and produced during his lifetime, that on geometry and perspective or measurement, to use his own title—which was published at Nuremberg in 1525, and that on fortification, published in 1527; the work on human proportions was brought out shortly after his death in 1528. His labours, whether artistic or theoretic, had for some time been carried on in the face of failing health. In the canals of the Low Countries he had caught a fever, of which he never shook off the effects. We have the evidence of this in his own written words, as well as in a sketch which he drew to indicate the seat of his suffering to some physician with whom he was in correspondence, and again in the record of his physical aspect which is preserved by a portrait engraved on wood just after his death, from a drawing made no doubt not long before in this portrait we see his shoulders already bent, the features somewhat gaunt, the old pride of the abundant locks shorn away. The end came on the night of the 6th of April 1528, so suddenly that there was no time to call his dearest friends to his bedside. He was buried in a vault which belonged to his wife’s family, but was afterwards disturbed, in the cemetery of St John at Nuremberg. An appropriate Requiescat is contained in the words of Luther, in a letter written to their common friend Eoban Hesse:—“As for Dürer, assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of trouble and from greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers: Amen.”

The principal extant paintings of Dürer, with the places where they are to be found, have been mentioned above. Of his drawings, which for students are the most vitally interesting part of his works, the richest collections are in the Albertina at Vienna, the Berlin Museum and the British Museum. The Louvre also possesses some good examples, and many others are dispersed in various public collections, as in the Musée Bonnat at Bayonne, at Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Dresden, Basel, Milan, Florence and Oxford, as well as in private hands all over Europe.

The principal editions of Dürer’s theoretical writings are these:—

Geometry and Perspective.—Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt, in Linien, Ebnen und ganzen Corporen (Nuremberg, 1525, 1533, 1538). A Latin translation of the same, with a long title (Paris, Weichel, 1532) and another ed. in 1535. Again in Latin, with the title Institutionum geometricarum libri quatuor (Arnheim, 1605).

Fortification.—Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Nuremberg, 1527), and other editions in 1530, 1538 and 1603 (Arnheim). A Latin translation, with the title De urbibus, arcibus, castellisque muniendis ac condendis (Paris, Weichel, 1535). See the article Fortification.

Human Proportion.—Hierinnen sind begriffen vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Nuremberg, 1582, and Arnheim, 1603). Latin translation: De symetria partium in rectis formis humanorum corporum libri in latinum conversi, de varietate figurarum, &c. libri ii. (Nuremberg, 1528, 1532 and 1534); (Paris, 1535, 1537, 1557). French translation (Paris, 1557, Arnheim, 1613, 1614). Italian translation (Venice, 1591, 1594); Portuguese translation (1599); Dutch translation (Arnheim, 1622, 1662).

The private literary remains of Dürer, his diary, letters, &c., were first published, partially in Von Murr’s Journal zur Kunstgeschichte (Nuremberg, 1785-1787); afterwards in Campe’s Reliquien von A. Dürer (Nuremberg, 1827); again edited by Thausing, in the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik (Vienna, 1872), but most completely in Lange and Fuhse’s Dürers schriftlicher Nachlass (Halle, 1893); W.M. Conway’s Literary Remains of A. Dürer (London, 1889) contains extensive transcripts from the MSS. in the British Museum.

The principal remaining literature of the subject will be found in the following books and treatises—Johann Neudörfer, Schreib- und Rechenmeister zu Nürnberg, Nachrichten über Künstlern und Werkleuten daselbst (Nuremberg, 1547); republished in the Vienna Quellenschrift (1875); C. Scheurl, Vita Antonii Kressen (1515, reprinted in the collection of Pirkheimer’s works, Frankfort 1610); Wimpheling, Epitome rerum Germanicarum, ch. 68 (Strassburg, 1565); Joachim von Sandrart, Deutsche Academie (Nuremberg, 1675); Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern (Nuremberg, 1730); C.G. von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, as above; Adam Bartsch, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. vii. (Vienna, 1808); J.P. Passavant, Le Peintre-Graveur, vol. iii. (Leipzig, 1842); J.F. Roth, Leben Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1791); Heller, Das Leben und die Werke Albrecht Dürers, vol. ii. (Bamberg, 1827-1831); B. Hausmann, Dürers Kupferstiche, Radirungen, Holzschnitte und Zeichnungen (Hanover, 1861); R. von Rettberg, Dürers Kupferstiche und Holzschnitte (Munich, 1876); M. Thausing, Dürer, Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst (Leipzig, 1876, 2nd ed., 1884), English translation (from the 1st ed. by F.A. Eaton, London, 1882); W. Schmidt in Dohme’s Kunst und Künstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1877); Œuvre de Albert Dürer reproduit et publié par Amand-Durand, texte par Georges Duplessis (Paris, 1877); C. Ephrussi, A. Dürer et ses dessins (Paris, 1882); F. Lippmann, Zeichnungen von A. Dürer in Nachbildungen (5 vols. Berlin, 1883-1905); A. Springer, Albrecht Dürer (Berlin, 1892); D. Burckhardt, Dürers Aufenthalt in Basel, 1492-1494 (Munich, 1892); G. von Terey, A Dürers venezianischer Aufenthalt, 1494-1495 (Strassburg, 1892); S.R. Koehler, A Chronological Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry Points and Etchings of A. Dürer (New York, 1894); L. Cust, A. Dürer, a Study of his Life and Works (London, 1897); Dürer Society’s Publications (10 vols., 1898-1907), edited by C. Dodgson and S.M. Peartree; H. Knackfuss, Dürer (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 6th ed., 1899), English translation, 1900; B. Haendcke, Die Chronologie der Landschaften A. Dürers (Strassburg, 1899); M. Zucker, Albrecht Dürer (Halle, 1899-1900); L. Justi, Konstruierte Figuren und Köpfe unter den Werken Albrecht Dürers (Leipzig, 1902); A. Pelzer, A. Dürer und Friedrich II. von der Pfalz (Strassburg, 1905); H. Wölfflin, Die Kunst A. Dürers (Munich, 1905); W. Weisbach, Der junge Dürer (Leipzig, 1906); V. Scherer, A. Dürer (Klassiker der Kunst, iv.), (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1906).

Apart from books, a large and important amount of the literature on Dürer is contained in articles scattered through the leading art periodicals of Germany, such as the Jahrbücher of the Berlin and Vienna museums, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, &c. A comprehensive survey of this literature is afforded by Prof. H.W. Singer’s Versuch einer Dürer-Bibliographie (Strassburg, 1903); articles published more recently will be found completely enumerated in A. Jellinek’s Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin).

(S. C.)

DURESS (through Fr. from Lat. duritia, harshness, severity, durus, hard), in law, constraint or compulsion. Duress may be of two kinds. It may consist in personal restraint or actual violence or imprisonment; or it may be by threats (per minas), as where a person is compelled to an act by threats of immediate death or grievous bodily harm. Duress, in certain cases, may be pleaded as a defence of an act which would otherwise be a crime, but the extent to which the plea of duress can be urged is unascertained. At common law a contract entered into under duress is voidable at the option of one of the parties. See Coercion, Contract.

D’URFEY, THOMAS (1653-1723), better known as Tom d’Urfey, English song-writer and dramatist, belonged to a Huguenot family settled at Exeter, where he was born in 1653. Honoré d’Urfé, the author of Astrée, was his uncle. His first play, The Siege of Memphis, or the Ambitious Queen, a bombastic rhymed tragedy, was produced at the Theatre Royal in 1676. He was much more successful with his comedies, which had brisk, complicated plots carried out in lively dialogue. He had a light touch for fitting words on current topics to popular airs; moreover, many of his songs were set to music by his friends Dr John Blow, Henry Purcell and Thomas Farmer. Many of these songs were introduced into his plays. Addison in the Guardian (No. 67) relates that he remembered to have seen Charles II. leaning on Tom d’Urfey’s shoulder and humming a song with him. Even William III. liked to hear him sing his songs, and as a strong Tory he was sure of the favour of Princess Anne, who is said to have given Tom fifty guineas for a song on the Electress Sophia, the next heir in succession to the crown. “The crown’s far too weighty, for shoulders of eighty,” said d’Urfey, with an indirect compliment to the princess, “So Providence kept her away,—poor old Dowager Sophy.” Pope, in an amusing letter to Henry Cromwell (Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vi. 91) describes him as “the only poet of tolerable reputation in this country.” In spite of the success of his numerous comedies he was poor in his old age. But his gaiety and invincible good humour had made him friends in the craft, and by the influence of Addison his Fond Husband, or The Plotting Sisters was revived for d’Urfey’s benefit at Drury Lane on the 15th of June 1713. This performance, for which Pope wrote a prologue full of rather faint praise, seems to have eased the poet’s difficulties. He died on the 26th of February 1723, and was buried in St James’s Church, Piccadilly.

Collections of his songs with the music appeared during his lifetime, the most complete being the 1719-1720 edition (6 vols.) of Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy. The best known of the twenty-nine pieces of his which actually found their way to the stage were Love for Money; or The Boarding School (Theatre Royal, 1691), The Marriage-Hater Match’d (1692), and The Comical History of Don Quixote, in three parts (1694, 1694 and 1696), which earned the especial censure of Jeremy Collier. In his burlesque opera, Wonders in the Sun; or the Kingdom of the Birds (1706, music by G.B. Draghi), the actors were dressed as parrots, crows, &c.

DURFORT, a village of south-western France, formerly in the province of Guienne, now in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, 18 m. N.W. of Montauban by road. It was at one time the seat of a feudal lordship which gave its name to a family distinguished in French and English history. Though earlier lords are known, the pedigree of the family is only clearly traceable to Arnaud de Durfort (fl. 1305), who acquired the fief of Duras by his marriage with a niece of Pope Clement V. His descendant, Gaillard de Durfort, having embraced the side of the king of England, went to London in 1453, and was made governor of Calais and a knight of the Garter.

The greatness of the family dates, however, from the 17th century. Guy Aldonce (1605-1665), marquis de Duras and comte de Rozan, had, by his wife Elizabeth de la Tour d’Auvergne, sister of Marshal Turenne, six sons, three of whom played a distinguished part. The eldest, Jacques Henri (1625-1704), was governor of Franche Comté in 1674 and was created a marshal of France for his share in the conquest of that province (1675). The second, Guy Aldonce (1630-1702), comte de Lorges and duc de Quintin (known as the duc de Lorges), became a marshal of France in 1676, commanded the army in Germany from 1690 to 1695, and captured Heidelberg in 1693. The sixth son, Louis (1640?-1709), marquis de Blanquefort, came to England in the suite of James, duke of York, in 1663, and was naturalized in the same year. On the 19th of January 1672-1673 he was raised to the English peerage as Baron Duras of Holdenby, his title being derived from an estate in Northamptonshire bought from the duke of York, and in 1676 he married Mary, daughter and elder co-heiress of Sir George Sondes, created in that year Baron Throwley, Viscount Sondes and earl of Feversham. On the death of his father-in-law (16th of April 1677), Duras succeeded to his titles under a special remainder. He was appointed by Charles II. successively to the command of the third and second troops of Horse Guards, was sent abroad on several important diplomatic missions, and became master of the horse (1679) and lord chamberlain to the queen (1680). In 1682 he was appointed a lord of the bed-chamber, and was present at the king’s deathbed reconciliation with the Roman Church. Under James II. Feversham became a member of the privy council, and in 1685 was given the chief command against the rebels under Monmouth (q.v.), in which he mainly distinguished himself by his cruelty to the vanquished. He was rewarded with a knighthood of the Garter and the colonelcy of the first troop of Life Guards, and in 1686 he was appointed to the command of the army assembled by King James on Blackheath to overawe the people. On James’s flight, Feversham succeeded in making his peace with William, on the intercession of the queen dowager, at whose instance he received the mastership of the Royal Hospital of St Catherine near the Tower (1698). He died without issue on the 8th of April 1709. [See G.E. C(ockayne), Complete Peerage, and art. in Dict. Nat. Biog.]

Jean Baptiste (1684-1770), due de Duras, son of Jacques Henri, was also a marshal of France. In 1733 he resigned the dukedom of Duras to his son, Emmanuel Félicité, himself receiving the brevet title of duc de Durfort. Emmanuel Félicité (1715-1789), duc de Duras, took part in all the wars of Louis XV. and was made a marshal of France in 1775. His grandson, Amédée Bretagne Malo (1771-1838), duc de Duras, is mainly known as the husband of Claire Louise Rose Bonne de Coëtnempren de Kersaint (1778-1828), daughter of Armand Guy Simon de Coëtnempren Kersaint (q.v.), who, as duchesse de Duras, presided over a once celebrated salon and wrote several novels once widely read.

The family of Durfort is represented in France now by the branch of Durfort-Civrac, dating from the 16th century. Jean Laurent (1740-1826), marquis de Civrac, married his cousin, the daughter of the duc de Lorges; his son, Guy Emeric Anne (1767-1837), duc de Civrac, became afterwards duc de Lorges. Henri, marquis de Durfort-Civrac (1812-1884), was a well-known politician, and was several times elected vice-president of the chamber of deputies.

DURGA, or Devi (Sanskrit for inaccessible), in Hindu mythology, the wife of Siva (q.v.) and daughter of Himavat (the Himalayas). She has many names and many characters. As Durga (so named from having slain the demon Durga) she is warlike and ferocious, and to her in this form are offered bloody sacrifices, and such ceremonies as the Durgapuja and Churrukpuga are held in her honour (see Kali). The chief festival in Bengal—sometimes termed the Christmas of Bengal—celebrates the goddess’s birth in the sixth Hindu month (parts of September and October). Durga is pictured, in spite of her fierce nature, with a gentle face. She has ten arms, holding each a weapon, while her attendant lions and giants are grouped on each side.

DURHAM, JOHN GEORGE LAMBTON, 1st Earl of (1792-1840), English statesman, son of William Henry Lambton of Lambton Castle, Durham, was born in London on the 12th of April 1792. His mother was Anne Barbara Villiers, daughter of the 4th earl of Jersey. Lambton was only five years old when by his father’s death at Pisa (1797) he succeeded to large estates in the north of England which had been in the uninterrupted possession of his family since the 12th century. In 1805 he went to Eton, and in 1809 obtained a commission in the 10th Hussars. In 1812, while still a minor, he made a runaway match with Henrietta, natural daughter of Lord Cholmondeley, whom he married at Gretna Green, and who died in 1815. In 1813 he was elected to the House of Commons as member for the county of Durham. Whig principles of a pronounced type were traditional in Lambton’s family. His grandfather, General John Lambton, had refused a peerage in 1793 out of loyalty to Fox, and his father was not only one of Pitt’s keenest opponents, but was chairman of “The Friends of the People” and author of that society’s address to the nation in 1792. Lambton adhered to this tradition, and soon developed opinions of an extremely Radical type, which he fearlessly put forward in parliament and in the country with marked ability. His maiden speech in the House of Commons was directed against the foreign policy of Lord Liverpool’s government, who had sanctioned, and helped to enforce, the annexation of Norway by Sweden. In 1815 he vehemently opposed the corn tax, and in general began to take a prominent part in opposition to the Tories. In 1816 he made the acquaintance of Lafayette in Paris, and narrowly escaped arrest for alleged complicity in his escape. In 1817 he began to speak on every opportunity in favour of parliamentary reform.

His political position was strengthened by his marriage in December 1816 to Louisa Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Lord Grey, and as early as 1818 he was taken into the political confidence of his father-in-law and other leaders of the Whigs in matters touching the leadership and policy of the party. But from the first Lambton belonged to the avowedly Radical wing of the party, with whose aims Grey had little sympathy; and when he gave notice of a resolution in 1819 in favour of shortening the duration of parliaments, and of a wide extension of the franchise, he found himself discountenanced by old Whigs like Grey, Holland and Fitzwilliam. Having warmly espoused the cause of Queen Caroline, Lambton ably seconded Lord Tavistock’s resolution in February 1821 censuring the government for their conduct towards the queen; and in April he made his first great speech in the House of Commons on parliamentary reform, when he proposed a scheme for the extension of the suffrage to all holders of property, the division of the country into electoral districts and the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs. He was now one of the recognized leaders of the advanced Liberals, forming a connecting link between the aristocratic Whig leaders and the irresponsible and often violent politicians of the great towns. His opposition to those members of his party who in 1825 were prepared for compromise on the question of Catholic emancipation led to his first conflict with Brougham, with whom he had been on terms of close friendship. While supporting the candidature of his brother-in-law, Lord Howick, for Northumberland in the elections of 1826, Lambton fought a duel with T.W. Beaumont, the Tory candidate, but without bloodshed on either side. Unlike his father-in-law, Lambton supported the ministry of Canning, though he had some grounds for personal grievance against the new prime minister, and after Canning’s death that of Lord Goderich. On the advice of the latter Lambton was raised to the peerage in 1828 with the title of Baron Durham. Owing to his Liberal principles Lord Durham was on terms of friendship with the duke of Sussex, and also with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who sought his advice in the difficult crisis in 1829 when he was offered the throne of Greece, and who, after he became king of the Belgians as Leopold I., continued to correspond with Durham as a trusted confidant; the same confidential relations also existed between Durham and Leopold’s sister, the duchess of Kent, and her daughter, afterwards Queen Victoria.

In November 1830 when Grey became prime minister in succession to the duke of Wellington, Lord Durham entered the cabinet as lord privy seal. Parliamentary reform was in the forefront of the new government’s policy, and with this question no statesman except Lord Grey himself was more closely indentified than Durham. To ardent reformers in the country the presence in the cabinet of “Radical Jack,” the name by which Lambton had been popularly known in the north of England, was a pledge that thorough-going reform would not be shirked by the Whigs, now in office for the first time for twenty years. And it was to his son-in-law that Lord Grey confided the task of preparing a scheme to serve as the basis of the proposed legislation. Full justice has not generally been done to the leading part played by Lord Durham in preparing the great Reform Act. He was the chief author of the proposals which, after being defeated in 1831, became law with little alteration in 1832. He was chairman of the famous committee of four, which met at his house in Cleveland Row and drew up the scheme submitted by the government to parliament. His colleagues, who were appointed rather as his assistants than as his equals, were Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham and Lord Duncannon; and it was Durham who selected Lord John Russell, not then in the cabinet, to introduce the bill in the House of Commons; a selection that was hotly opposed by Brougham, whose later vindictive animosity against Durham is to be traced to his having been passed over in the selection of the committee of four. Durham was present with Grey at an audience of the king which led to the sudden dissolution of parliament in March 1831; and when the deadlock between the two Houses occurred over the second Reform Bill, he was the most eager in pressing on the prime minister the necessity for a creation of peers to overcome the resistance of the house of Lords.

After the passing of the Reform Act, Durham, whose health was bad and who had suffered the loss of two of his children, accepted a special and difficult diplomatic mission to Russia, which he carried out with much tact and ability, though without accomplishing its main purpose. On his return he resigned office in March 1833, ostensibly for reasons of health, but in reality owing to his disagreement with the government’s Irish policy as conducted by Lord Stanley; in the same month he was created earl of Durham and Viscount Lambton. His advanced opinions, in the assertion of which he was too little disposed to consider the convictions of others, gradually alienated the more moderate of his late colleagues, such as Melbourne and Palmerston, and even Lord Grey often found his son-in-law intractable and self-assertive; but the growing hostility of the treacherous Brougham was mainly due to Durham’s undoubted popularity in the country, where he was regarded by many, including J.S. Mill, as Grey’s probable successor in the leadership of the Liberal party. Durham was at this time courted by the youthful Disraeli, who, when Melbourne became prime minister in succession to Grey in 1834, declared that the Whigs could not exist as a party without Lord Durham. Brougham’s animosity became undisguised at the great banquet given to Lord Grey at Edinburgh in September 1834, where he made a venomous attack on Durham, repeated shortly afterwards at Salisbury, and anonymously in the Edinburgh Review. On the other hand the strength of Durham’s position in the country was shown on the occasion of his visit to Glasgow in October to receive the freedom of the city, when a concourse of more than a hundred thousand persons assembled to hear him speak at Glasgow Green, and where he replied to Brougham’s attacks at a great banquet held in his honour. Brougham had over-reached himself; and although Durham was no favourite with William IV., the king’s disgust with the lord chancellor was one of the principal reasons for his summary dismissal of the Whig ministry in 1834. When Melbourne returned to power after Peel’s short administration, Durham’s radicalism and impatient temper excluded him from the cabinet; and again in 1837, on his return from an appointment as ambassador extraordinary in St Petersburg (1835-1837), when there was some idea of his joining the ministry, Lord John Russell wrote: “Everybody, after the experience we have had, must doubt whether there can be peace or harmony in a cabinet of which Lord Durham is a member.”

In July 1837 he resisted the entreaty of Lord Melbourne that he should undertake the government of Canada, where the condition of affairs had become alarming; but a few months later, giving way to the urgent insistence of the prime minister who promised him “the firmest and most unflinching support” of the government, he accepted the post of governor-general and lord high commissioner, with the almost dictatorial powers conferred on him by an act passed in February 1838, by which the constitution of Lower Canada was suspended for two years. Having secured the services of Charles Buller (q.v.) as first secretary, and having with more doubtful wisdom appointed Thomas Turton and Edward Gibbon Wakefield (q.v.) to be his unofficial assistants, Durham arrived at Quebec on the 28th of May 1838. Papineau’s rebellion had been quelled, but the French Canadians were sullen, the attitude of the United States equivocal, and the general situation dangerous, especially in the Lower Province where government was practically in abeyance. Durham at once issued a conciliatory proclamation. His next step was to dismiss the executive council of his predecessor and to appoint a new one consisting of men uncommitted to any existing faction, a step much criticized at home but generally commended on the spot. On the 28th of June, the day of Queen Victoria’s coronation, he issued a proclamation of amnesty, from the benefit of which eight persons only of those who had taken part in the rebellion were excepted; while an accompanying ordinance provided for the transference of these eight excepted persons from Montreal to Bermuda, where they were to be imprisoned without trial. Papineau and fifteen other fugitives were forbidden on pain of death to return to Canada. In a letter of congratulation to the queen, Durham took credit for the clemency of his policy towards the rebels, and it was defended on the same ground by Charles Buller and by public opinion in the colony.

In England, however, as soon as these proceedings became known, Brougham seized the opportunity for venting his malice against both Durham and the ministry. He had already raised objections to the appointment of Turton and Wakefield; he now attacked the ordinance in the House of Lords, challenging the legality of the clause transporting prisoners to Bermuda, where Durham had no jurisdiction. Melbourne and his colleagues, with the honourable exception of Lord John Russell, made little effort to defend the public servant to whom they had promised “the most unflinching support”; and, although both the prime minister and the colonial secretary when first fully informed of the governor-general’s proceedings had hastened to assure him of their “entire approval,” three weeks later, cowed by Brougham’s malignant invective, they disallowed the ordinance, and carried an Act of Indemnity the terms of which were insulting to Durham. The latter immediately resigned; but before returning to England he put himself in the wrong by issuing a proclamation in which he not only justified his own conduct in detail, but made public complaint of his grievances against the ministers of the Crown, a step that alienated much sympathy which his unjust treatment by the government would otherwise have called forth, though it was defended by men like Charles Buller and J.S. Mill. The usual official honours given to a returning plenipotentiary were not accorded to Durham on his arrival at Plymouth on the 30th of November 1838, but the populace received him with acclamation. He immediately set about preparing his memorable “Report on the Affairs of British North America,” which was laid before parliament on the 31st of January 1839. This report, one of the greatest state papers in the English language, laid down the principles, then unrecognized, which have guided British colonial policy ever since. It was not written or composed by Charles Buller, as Brougham was the first to suggest, and the credit for the statesmanship it exhibits is Lord Durham’s alone, though he warmly acknowledged the assistance he had derived from Buller, Wakefield and others in preparing the materials on which it was based. With regard to the future government of British North America, Durham had at first inclined towards a federation of all the colonies on that continent, and this aim, afterwards achieved, remained in his eyes an ideal to be striven for; but as a more immediately practical policy he advised the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada, his avowed aim being to organize a single state in which the British inhabitants would be in a majority. He further urged the creation of an executive council responsible to the colonial legislature; he advised state-aided emigration on the broadest possible scale, and the formation of an intercolonial railway for the development of the whole country. Meantime Durham, who almost alone among the statesmen of his time saw the importance of imperial expansion, interested himself in the emigration schemes of Gibbon Wakefield (q.v.); he became chairman of the New Zealand Company, and was thus concerned in the enterprise which forestalled France in asserting sovereignty over the islands of New Zealand in September 1839. His health, however, had long been failing, and he died at Cowes on the 28th of July 1840, just five days after the royal assent had been given to the bill giving effect to his project for uniting Upper and Lower Canada.

Lord Durham filled a larger place in the eyes of his contemporaries than many statesmen who have been better remembered. He was in his lifetime regarded as a great popular leader; and his accession to supreme political power was for some years considered probable by many; his opinions were, however, too extreme to command the confidence of any considerable party in parliament before 1840. That Brougham hated him and Melbourne feared him, is a tribute to his abilities; and in the first Reform Act, of which he was the chief author, and in the famous Report on the principles of colonial policy, he left an indelible mark on English history. His personal defects of character did much to mar the success of a career, which, it must be remembered, terminated at the age of forty-eight. He was impatient, hot-tempered, hypersensitive to criticism, vain and prone to take offence at fancied slights; but he was also generous and unvindictive, and while personally ambitious his care for the public interest was genuine and untiring.

By his first wife Durham had three daughters; by his second, who was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Victoria but resigned on her husband’s return from Canada, he had two sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Charles William, the “Master Lambton” of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s celebrated picture, died in 1831; the second, George Frederick d’Arcy (1828-1879), succeeded his father as 2nd earl of Durham. The latter’s son, John George Lambton (b. 1855), became 3rd earl in 1879.

See Stuart J. Reid, Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham (2 vols., London, 1906); The Greville Memoirs, parts i. and ii. (London, 1874-1887); Richard, duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV. and Victoria (2 vols., London, 1861); William Harris, History of the Radical Party in Parliament (London, 1885); Harriet Martineau, History of the Thirty Years’ Peace (4 vols., London, 1877); William Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. x. (10 vols., Toronto, 1887-1898), H.E. Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy (London, 1897).

(R. J. M.)

DURHAM, a northern county of England, bounded N. by Northumberland, E. by the North Sea, S. by Yorkshire, and W. by Westmorland and Cumberland. Its area is 1014.6 sq. m. It is wholly on the eastern slope, the western angle being occupied by spurs of the Pennine chain, exceeding 2300 ft. in height at some points on the Cumberland border. West of a line from Barnard Castle by Wolsingham to the neighbourhood of Consett the whole of the land, excepting narrow valleys, lies at elevations exceeding 1000 ft. This area represents roughly one quarter of the total. The principal rivers rising in these hills are the Derwent, tributary to the Tyne, forming part of the county boundary with Northumberland, the Wear and the Tees, which forms almost the whole of the boundary with Westmorland and Yorkshire. The dales traversed by these rivers in their upper parts, though sufficiently strongly contrasted with the dark, barren moors surrounding them, yet partake of somewhat the same wild character. Lower down, however, are beautiful and fertile valleys, the main rivers flowing between steep, well-wooded banks; while the lesser streams of the coastal district have carved out denes or ravines on the steep flanks of which vegetation is luxuriant. Castle Eden Dene, 7 m. N.W. of Hartlepool, is famous for its beautiful trees and wild flowers. The coastward slope is fairly steep in the northern half of the county, but it is steady, and the coast itself has no striking scenic features, save where the action of the waves upon the magnesian limestone has separated great masses, leaving towering fragments standing, and fretting the face of the rock with caverns and arches. The cluster of rocks named the Black Halls, 6 m. N.W. of Hartlepool, best exhibits these features. Other natural phenomena include the Linnkirk caves near Stanhope in Weardale in which numerous fossils and bones, with evidence of habitation by man, have been discovered; and the Hell Kettles, S. of Darlington, near the junction of the Tees and the Skerne, four cavities filled with water, reputed to be unfathomable, and measuring from 80 to 120 ft. in diameter. The water is sulphurous.

Except in the moorlands of the west only a few scraps of the county have been left in their natural state; but these portions are of great interest to the student of natural history. The ballast-hills at Shields, Jarrow and Hartlepool, formed by the discharge of material from ships arriving in ballast from foreign countries, are overgrown with aliens, many of which are elsewhere unknown in this country. Nearly fifty different species have been found. Stockton was almost the last retreat in England of the native black rat. Of the former abundance of deer, wild ox and boar every peat bog testifies by its remains; the boar appears to have existed in the reign of Henry VIII., and records of red deer in the county may be traced down to the middle of the 18th century.

Geology.—The uplift of the Pennine hills causes nearly all the stratified rocks of Durham to dip towards the east or south-east. Thus the oldest rocks are to be found in the west, while in passing eastward younger rocks are continually met. In the hilly district of Weardale and Teesdale the Carboniferous Limestone series prevails; this is a succession of thick beds of limestone with intervening sandstones and shales. Some of the calcareous beds are highly fossiliferous; those at Frosterley near Stanhope are full of the remains of corals and the stone is polished as a marble. Much of the higher ground in the west is capped by Millstone Grit, as at Muggleswick and Walsingham commons. The outcrop of this formation broadens eastward until it is covered by the Durham coalfield which occupies the centre of the county from Newcastle and South Shields to Barnard Castle. The Coal Measures are about 2000 ft. thick and contain upwards of 100 seams of coal, including many of great importance—the Brockwell coal, Low Main coal and High Main coal are some of the well-known seams. Fireclays of great value are obtained from beneath many of the coal seams. Apart from the coals, the Coal Measures are made up of beds of sandstone and shale, the former called “post” and the latter “plate” by the local miners. Permian magnesian limestone succeeds the Coal Measures on the east, it reaches from the Tees to South Shields in a broad tract and occupies the coast between that town and Hartlepool. Remarkable concretionary forms are found in the Fulwell Quarries simulating honeycomb and coral structures. The stone is quarried at Marsden for the manufacture of Epsom salts; it is also used for lime-making and building. Fish remains are not uncommon in it. The sandstones and marls seen between the magnesian limestone and the Coal Measures at South Shields, Newbottle and several miles farther south are usually classed as Permian, but they may possibly prove to belong to the lower series. In the south-east corner of the county, by Darlington, Stockton and Seaton Carew, the low ground is made of Triassic rocks, red marls and sandstones with beds of gypsum and rock salt. Coal Measures undoubtedly underlie the Permian and Triassic strata. Normal faults traverse the district, mostly from east to west. Great dykes and sills of basalt lie in the Tees valley above Middleton and one, the Great Whin Sill, may be followed in an easterly direction for over 120 m. The Cockfield dyke and Little Whin Sill are similar intrusions of basalt. Lead mines have been extensively worked in the limestone districts of Weardale and Teesdale; the limestone itself is quarried on a large scale for fluxing in the ironworks. Glacial deposits obscure the older rocks over much of the county, they contain travelled stones from the Pennines and Cheviots. Submerged forests appear off the coast at West Hartlepool and other points. A small patch of Silurian occurs near Cronkley on the Tees; here slate pencils were formerly made.

Agriculture.—Near the river Tees, and in some places bordering on the other rivers, the soil is loam or a rich clay. At a farther distance from these rivers it is of inferior quality, with patches of gravel interspersed. The hills east of the line from Barnard Castle to Consett are covered with a dry loam, the fertility of which varies with its depth. West of the line the summits and flanks of the hills are in great part waste moorland. Only some two-thirds of the total area of the county are under cultivation, and nearly two-thirds of this are in permanent pasture. There are also nearly 60,000 acres of hill-pasture. Of the diminished area under corn crops oats occupy more than one-half, and barley much exceeds wheat. Nearly two-thirds of the average under green crops are occupied by turnips, as many cattle are raised and have a long-standing reputation. The cows are especially good yielders of milk. The sheep are also highly esteemed, particularly the Teesdale breed. Those of Weardale are small, but their mutton is finely flavoured.

Mining.—The mountain limestone contains veins of lead ore and zinc ore. The beds of coal in the Coal Measures have long been a source of enormous wealth. The mines are among the most extensive and productive in the kingdom. At Sunderland the coal trade furnishes employment for hundreds of vessels, independently of the “keels” or lighters which convey the coal from the termini of the railways and tramways to the ships. The seams worked extend horizontally for many miles, and are from 20 to 100 fathoms beneath the surface. The Frosterley marble has been quarried for many centuries near Stanhope for decorative purposes, in Durham cathedral and elsewhere taking the place of Purbeck marble, while in modern houses it is used chiefly for chimney-pieces. Ironstone is worked in the neighbourhood of Whickham and elsewhere. Excellent slate is quarried at several places. The neighbourhood of Wolsingham abounds in fine millstones. The Newcastle grindstones are procured at Gateshead Fell; and firestone for building ovens, furnaces and the like is obtained in various parts of Durham, and exported in considerable quantity.

Other Industries.—The manufacturing industries are extensive, and all are founded upon the presence of coal, of which, moreover, large quantities are exported. The industrial and mining districts may be taken to lie almost wholly east of a line from Darlington through Bishop Auckland to Consett. Textile industries are not carried on to any great extent, but a large number of hands are employed in the manufacture of machines, appliances, conveyances, tools, &c. Of this manufacture the branch of shipbuilding stands first; the yards on the Tyne are second only to those on the Clyde, and the industry is prosecuted also at Sunderland, the Hartlepools and Stockton-on-Tees. The founding and conversion of metal stands next in importance; and other industries include the manufacture of paper, chemicals (chiefly on the Tyne), glass and bottles and earthenware (at Gateshead and Sunderland). The output of limestone is greater than that of any other county in the United Kingdom. As regards iron, the presence of the coal and the proximity of the Cleveland iron district of North Yorkshire enable the county to produce over one million tons of pig-iron annually, though the output of iron from within the county itself is inconsiderable. There is a large production of salt from brine. The sea fisheries of Sunderland and Hartlepool are valuable.

Communications.—Railway communication is provided entirely by the North Eastern company. The main line runs northward through Darlington, Durham and Gateshead, and there are a large number of branches through the mining and industrial districts, while the company also owns some of the docks. From Stockton to Darlington ran the railway engineered by George Stephenson and opened in 1825. The chief ports of Durham are Jarrow and South Shields on the Tyne, Sunderland at the mouth of the Wear, Seaham Harbour, Hartlepool East and West and Stockton-on-Tees.

Administration and Population.—Durham is one of the Counties Palatine, the others being Lancashire and Cheshire. The area of the ancient county is 649,352 acres, and that of the administrative county 649,244 acres. There were formerly three outlying portions of the county, known as North Durham (including Norhamshire and Islandshire), Bedlingtonshire and Crayke. These were attached to the county as having formed parcels of the ancient “patrimony of St Cuthbert,” of which the land between Tyne and Tees was the chief portion. The population in 1891 was 1,016,454 and in 1901 1,187,361. The birth-rate is much above, the death-rate also above, but the percentage of illegitimacy considerably below, the average. The county is divided into 4 wards. The following are municipal boroughs: Darlington (pop. 44,511), Durham, city (14,679), Gateshead, county borough (109,888), Hartlepool (22,723), Jarrow (34,295), South Shields, county borough (97,263), Stockton-on-Tees (51,478), Sunderland, county borough (146,077), West Hartlepool (62,627). The other urban districts may be distributed so as to indicate roughly the most populous and industrial districts:

1. In the Tyne district (where Gateshead, Jarrow and South Shields are the chief centres)—Blaydon (19,623), Felling (22,467), Hebburn (20,901), Ryton (8452), Whickham (12,852).

2. North-western district—Annfield Plain (12,481), Benfieldside (7457), Consett (9694), Leadgate (4657), Tanfield (8276), Stanley (13,554).

3. Durham and Bishop Auckland district (continuation south of the preceding)—Bishop Auckland (11,969), Brandon and Byshottles (15,573), Crook (11,471), Shildon and East Thickley (11,759), Spennymoor (16,665), Tow Law (4371), Willington (7887).

4. Durham and Sunderland district (N.E. of preceding)—Hetton (13,673), Houghton-le-Spring (7858), Seaham Harbour (10,163), Southwick-on-Wear (12,643). The township of Chester-le-Street (11,753) is also in this district.

The only other urban districts are Barnard Castle (4421) in Teesdale and Stanhope (1964) in Weardale. Durham is in the north-eastern circuit, and assizes are held at Durham. It has one court of quarter sessions and is divided into 16 petty sessional divisions. All the boroughs have separate commissions of the peace. The ancient county, which is in the diocese of Durham, excepting part of one parish in that of York, contains 243 ecclesiastical parishes wholly or in part. There are 288 civil parishes. The county is divided into eight parliamentary divisions, each returning one member—Jarrow, Chester-le-Street, Houghton-le-Spring, Mid, North-west, Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, South-east. It also includes the parliamentary borough of Sunderland, returning two members, and the boroughs of Darlington, Durham, Gateshead, Hartlepool, South Shields and Stockton-on-Tees, returning one member each. Among educational establishments there may be mentioned the university and the grammar school in the city of Durham, and the Roman Catholic college of Ushaw near Durham.

History.—After the death of Ida in the 6th century the kingdom of Northumbria was divided into the two states of Bernicia and Deira, separated from each other by the Tees, the latter including the district afterwards known as Durham. The post-conquest palatinate arose by a process of slow growth from the grant of land made by Egfrith to St Cuthbert on his election to the see of Lindisfarne in 684. On the transference of the see to Chester-le-Street in the 9th century, Guthred the Dane endowed it with the whole district between the Tyne and the Wear, stretching west as far as Watling Street, a grant confirmed by Alfred; and when in 995 the see was finally established at Durham, the endowment was again largely enriched by various donations. Durham continued, however, to form part of the earldom of Northumbria, and not until after the purchase of the earldom by Bishop Walcher in 1075 did the bishops begin to exercise regal rights in their territory. The term palatinus is applied to the bishop in 1293, and from the 13th century onwards the bishops frequently claim such rights in their lands as the king enjoys in his kingdom. At the time of the Conquest the bishop’s possessions included nearly all the district between the Tees and the Tyne, except Sadberge, and also the outlying districts of Bedlingtonshire, Norhamshire, Islandshire and Crayke, together with Hexhamshire, the city of Carlisle, and part of Teviotdale. Henry I. deprived the bishopric of the last three, but in compensation made over to it the vills of Burdon, Aycliffe and Carlton, hitherto included in the earldom of Northumberland. The wapentake of Sadberge also formed part of the earldom of Northumberland; it was purchased for the see by Bishop Pudsey in 1189, but continued an independent franchise, with a separate sheriff, coroner and court of pleas. In the 14th century Sadberge was included in Stockton ward and was itself divided into two wards. The division into the four wards of Chester-le-Street, Darlington, Easington and Stockton existed in the 13th century, each ward having its own coroner and a three-weekly court corresponding to the hundred court. The diocese was divided into the archdeaconries of Durham and Northumberland. The former is mentioned in 1072, and in 1291 included the deaneries of Chester-le-Street, Auckland, Lanchester and Darlington.

Until the 15th century the most important administrative officer in the palatinate was the steward. Other officers were the sheriff, the coroners, the chamberlain and the chancellor. The palatine exchequer was organized in the 12th century. The palatine assembly represented the whole county, and dealt chiefly with fiscal questions. The bishop’s council, consisting of the clergy, the sheriff and the barons, regulated the judicial affairs, and later produced the Chancery and the courts of Admiralty and Marshalsea. The prior of Durham ranked first among the bishop’s barons. He had his own court, and almost exclusive jurisdiction over his men. The quo warranto proceedings of 1293 exhibit twelve lords enjoying more or less extensive franchises under the bishop. The repeated efforts of the crown to check the powers of the palatinate bishops culminated in 1536 in the Act of Resumption, which deprived the bishop of the power to pardon offences against the law or to appoint judicial officers; indictments and legal processes were in future to run in the name of the king, and offences to be described as against the peace of the king, not against that of the bishop. In 1596 restrictions were imposed on the powers of the chancery, and in 1646 the palatinate was formally abolished. It was revived, however, after the Restoration, and continued with much the same power until the act of 1836, which provided that the palatine jurisdiction should in future be vested in the crown. There were ten palatinate barons in the 12th century, the most important being the Hiltons of Hilton Castle, the Bulmers of Brancepeth, the Conyers of Sockburne, the Hansards of Evenwood, and the Lumleys of Lumley Castle. The Nevilles owned large estates in the county; Raby Castle, their principal seat, was built by John de Neville in 1377. Owing to its isolated position the palatinate took little part or interest in any of the great rebellions of the Norman and Plantagenet period. During the Wars of the Roses Henry VI. passed through Durham, and the novelty of a royal visit procured him an enthusiastic reception. On the outbreak of the Great Rebellion Durham inclined to support the cause of the parliament, and in 1640 the high sheriff of the palatinate guaranteed to supply the Scottish army with provisions during their stay in the county. In 1642 the earl of Newcastle formed the western counties into an association for the king’s service, but in 1644 the palatinate was again overrun by the Scottish army, and after the battle of Marston Moor fell entirely into the hands of the parliament.

Durham has never possessed any manufactures of importance, and the economic history of the county centres round the growth of the mining industry, which employed almost the whole of the non-agricultural population. Stephen possessed a mine in Durham which he granted to Bishop Pudsey, and in the same century colliers are mentioned at Coundon, Bishopwearmouth and Sedgefield. Cockfield Fell was one of the earliest Landsale collieries in Durham. Edward III. issued an order allowing coal dug at Newcastle to be taken across the Tyne, and Richard II. granted to the inhabitants of Durham licence to export the produce of the mines, without paying dues to the corporation of Newcastle. Among other early industries lead-mining was carried on in the western part of the county, and mustard was extensively cultivated. Gateshead had a considerable tanning trade and shipbuilding was carried on at Jarrow.

In 1614 a bill was introduced in parliament for securing representation to the county and city of Durham and the borough of Barnard Castle. The movement was strongly opposed by the bishop, as an infringement of his palatinate rights, and the county was first summoned to return members to parliament in 1654. After the Restoration the county and city returned two members each. By the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned two members for two divisions, and the boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland acquired representation. The boroughs of Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool returned one member each from 1868 until the Redistribution Act of 1885.

Antiquities.—To the Anglo-Saxon period are to be referred portions of the churches of Monk Wearmouth (Sunderland), Jarrow, Escomb near Bishop Auckland, and numerous sculptured crosses, two of which are in situ at Aycliffe. The best remains of the Norman period are to be found in Durham cathedral and in the castle, also in some few parish churches, as at Pittington and Norton near Stockton. Of the Early English period are the eastern portion of the cathedral, the fine churches of Darlington, Hartlepool, and St Andrew, Auckland, Sedgefield, and portions of a few other churches. The Decorated and Perpendicular periods are very scantily represented, on account, as is supposed, of the incessant wars between England and Scotland in the 14th and 15th centuries. The principal monastic remains, besides those surrounding Durham cathedral, are those of its subordinate house or “cell,” Finchale Priory, beautifully situated by the Wear. The most interesting castles are those of Durham, Raby, Brancepeth and Barnard. There are ruins of castelets or peel-towers at Dalden, Ludworth and Langley Dale. The hospitals of Sherburn, Greatham and Kepyer, founded by early bishops of Durham, retain but few ancient features.

See W. Hutchinson, History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (3 vols., Newcastle, 1785-1794); R. Surtees, History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (4 vols., London, 1816-1840); B. Bartlet, The Bishoprick Garland, Collection of Legends, Songs, Ballads ... of Durham (London, 1834); J. Raine, History and Antiquities of North Durham (London, 1852); Perry and Herman, Illustrations of the Medieval Antiquities of the County of Durham (Oxford, 1867); G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (New York, &c., 1900); Victoria County History, Durham. See also the Surtees Society’s Publications, and Transactions of the Architectural Society of Durham and Northumberland.

DURHAM, a city and municipal and parliamentary borough, and the county town of Durham, England, 256 m. N. by W. from London, on the North Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 14,679. The nucleus of the site is a narrow, bold peninsula formed by a bend of the river Wear, on which stand the cathedral and the castle. The city, however, extends both E. and W. of this.

The position of the cathedral of St Cuthbert, its west end rising immediately from the steep wooded bank of the river, is surpassed in beauty by no other English cathedral. Its foundation arose from the fact that here, after Cathedral. wandering far over the north of England, the monks of Lindisfarne rested with the body of St Cuthbert, which they had removed from its tomb in fear of Danish invaders. This was in 995. Soon afterwards a church was built by Bishop Ealdhune, and the see was removed hither from Lindisfarne. The peninsula was called Dunholme (Hill Island), which in Norman times was softened to Duresme, whence Durham. It is said that the monks of Lindisfarne, knowing the name of the place where they should find retreat, but ignorant of its situation, were guided hither by a woman searching for her cow, and the bas-relief of a cow on the north wall of the church commemorates this incident. In 1093 Ealdhune’s church was rebuilt by Bishop Carilef, who changed the early establishment of married priests into a Benedictine abbey. The grand Norman building in which his designs were carried out remains with numerous additions. The stone-vaulting is particularly noteworthy. The choir contains the earliest work, but Carilef’s eastern apses made way for the exquisite chapel of the Nine Altars, with its rose windows and beautiful carving, of late Early English workmanship. The nave is massive Norman, with round pillars ornamented with surface-carving of various patterns. The western towers are Norman with an Early English superstructure. The famous Galilee chapel, of the finest late Norman work, projects from the west end. The central tower is a lofty and graceful Perpendicular structure. Other details especially worthy of notice are the altar screen of c. 1380, and the curious semi-classical font-cover of the 17th century. There is a fine sanctuary-knocker on the north door. The cloisters are of the early part of the 15th century. The chapter-house is a modern restoration of the original Norman structure, a very fine example, which was destroyed by James Wyatt c. 1796, in the course of restoration of which much was ill-judged. The cathedral library, formerly the dormitory and refectories of the abbey, contains a number of curious and interesting printed books and MSS., and the portable altar, vestments and other relics found in St Cuthbert’s grave. The Galilee contains the supposed remains of the Venerable Bede. The total length of the cathedral within is 496½ ft., the greatest height within (except the lantern) 74½ ft., and the height of the central tower 218 ft. The diocese of Durham covers the whole county excepting a small fragment, and also very small parts of Northumberland and Yorkshire.

The naturally strong position selected for the resting-place of St Cuthbert’s remains was possibly artificially fortified also, but it was not until 1072 that William the Conqueror caused the erection of a castle to the north of the Castle. cathedral across the neck of the peninsula. Of this there remain a beautiful crypt-chapel, and a few details incorporated in later work. Other interesting portions are the Norman gallery, with its fine arcade, Bishop Hatfield’s hall of c. 1350, a reconstruction of the previous Norman one by Bishop Pudsey, and the Black Staircase of fine woodwork of the 17th century. The keep is a modern reconstruction. The castle, with the exception of some apartments used by the judges of assize, is appropriated to the uses of Durham University. On the peninsula are also the churches of St Mary le Bow in the North Bailey and St Mary the Less, the one a 17th-century building on a very ancient site, possibly that on which the first church rose over St Cuthbert’s remains; the other possessing slight traces of Norman work, but almost completely modernized. Of other churches in Durham, the site of St Oswald is apparently pre-Norman, and the building contains Norman work of Bishop Pudsey, also some fine early 15th-century woodwork. St Margaret’s and St Giles’ churches show work of the same period, and the second of these has earlier portions.

Several of the streets of Durham preserve an appearance of antiquity. Three of the bridges crossing the Wear are old, that of Framwellgate having been built in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 15th. In the neighbourhood of the city certain sites are of interest as adding detail to its history. To the south on Maiden Hill there is an encampment, occupied, if not constructed, by the Romans. Immediately W. of Durham is Neville’s Cross, of which little remains. The battle of Neville’s Cross was fought in 1346, resulting in the defeat of the invading Scots by the English under Lord Neville and Henry Percy. The Scots had encamped at Beaurepaire or Bearpark, where a few ruins mark the site of the county residence of the priors of Durham, which had suffered from previous invaders. On the Wear below Durham is the priory of Finchale (1196), of which there are considerable remains of Early English date and later, but in the main Decorated. The valley of the Wear in the neighbourhood of Durham is well wooded and picturesque, but there are numerous collieries on the uplands above it, and the beauty of the county is marred.

Among educational establishments in Durham the university stands first. The earliest connexion of the ecclesiastical foundation at Durham with an actual educational foundation was made by Prior Richard de Hoton (1290-1308), University. who erected a hall in Oxford for students from Durham, who had previously enjoyed no such provision. In 1380 Bishop Hatfield refounded this hall as Durham College, which became Trinity College (see Oxford) on a new foundation (1555) when the possessions of the abbey of Durham had been surrendered in 1540, after which Durham College survived as a secular foundation only for a few years. Henry VIII. had the unfulfilled intention of founding a college in Durham, and a similar attempt failed in the time of the Commonwealth. In 1831 the scheme for a college was projected by the chapter; an act of 1832 specified the foundation as a university, and in Michaelmas 1833 its doors were opened. The first warden, and a prime mover in the scheme of foundation, was Archdeacon Charles Thorp (d. 1862). In 1837 the university received its charter from William IV. The dean and chapter of the cathedral are governors, and the bishop of Durham is visitor, but the active management is in the hands of the warden, senate and convocation. The system and life of the university are broadly similar to those of the greater universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Proctorial administration is carried on by two proctors annually nominated by the warden. Among the various residential divisions of the university may be mentioned Bishop Hatfield’s Hall (1846), which, through its endowment, by means of such methods of economy as provision for all meals in common, permits men of limited means to become students. The degree for bachelor of arts is awarded after two public examinations, and may be taken in two years, with a total of six months’ residence in each year. Special examinations are provided for candidates who seek honours, and those who obtain honours are admissible, after a certain period, to the mastership of arts without further examination, but in other cases further examination must have been taken, or an essay presented as a qualification for this degree. A theological course is provided for bachelors of the university, those who have passed a similar course elsewhere, or non-graduates aged nineteen who have passed a certain standard of examination. Instruction in civil engineering and mining was established as early as 1837, but was subsequently given up; and in 1871 the university and the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers co-operated to found the college of physical science at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which provides such instruction and was incorporated with the university in 1874. The college of medicine at Newcastle has been in connexion with Durham University since 1852, and the professors there are professors of the university. In 1895 degrees for women were established, and in 1889 a hostel was opened for the accommodation of women, who may take any course of instruction except the theological. In 1889 musical degrees were instituted, and a professorship was founded in 1897. Among other subjects may be mentioned the granting of degrees in hygiene, and of diplomas in public health and education (see J.T. Fowler, Durham University, uniform with series of College Histories; London, 1904).

The grammar school was refounded by Henry VIII. out of the monastic school. It is a flourishing institution on the lines of the public schools, and has “king’s scholarships” tenable in the school, and scholarships and exhibitions tenable at the universities. There are also a diocesan training college for schoolmasters and mistresses, and a high school for girls; and 4 m. W. of the city is the great Roman Catholic College of St Cuthbert, Ushaw, the representative of the old college at Douai. Here are preserved the magnificent natural history collections of Charles Waterton. Other buildings worthy of notice in Durham are the town-hall, a 16th-century building reconstructed in 1851, the police station, and the guildhall, the shire hall and county buildings, and the county hospital. There are ironworks and manufactures of hosiery, carpets and mustard in the city. The parliamentary borough returns one member. The corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1070 acres.

History of the City.—The foundation of the city followed on that of the church by the monks of Lindisfarne at the close of the 10th century. The history of the city is closely associated with that of the palatinate of Durham. The bishop of Durham among other privileges claimed a mint in the city, which, according to Boldon Book, rendered ten marks yearly until its value was reduced by that established by Henry II. at Newcastle, and it was temporarily abolished by the same king. The earliest charter, dated 1179 or 1180, is a grant of exemption from toll merchet and heriot made by Bishop Hugh Pudsey and confirmed by Pope Alexander. Before that time, however, the monks had a little borough at Elvet, which is divided from Durham by the Wear and afterwards became part of the city. In 1183 the city was at farm and rendered sixty marks. It was at first governed by a bailiff appointed by the bishop, but in 1565 Bishop Pilkington ordained that the government should consist, in addition to the bailiff, of one alderman and twelve assistants, the latter to continue in office for life, and the former to be chosen every year from among their number. This form of government was replaced in 1602, under the charter of Bishop Matthew, by that of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 burgesses, the aldermen and burgesses forming a common council and electing a mayor every year from among the aldermen. This was confirmed by James I., but in 1684 the corporation were obliged to resign their charters to Bishop Crew, who granted them a new one, probably reserving to himself a right of veto on the election of the mayor and aldermen. At the time of the Revolution, however, Bishop Matthew’s charter was revived, and continued to be the governing charter of the city until 1770, when, owing to dissensions as to the election of the common council, the number of aldermen was reduced to four and the charter became void. No mayor or aldermen were elected for ten years, but in 1780 Bishop Egerton, on the petition of the burgesses, granted them a new charter, which was practically a confirmation of that of 1602, and remained in force until the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. Being within the county palatine, the city of Durham sent no members to parliament, until, after several attempts beginning in 1614, it was enabled by an act of 1673 to return two members, which it continued to do until 1885, when by the Redistribution of Seats Act the number was reduced to one.

The corporation of Durham claim their fair and market rights under Bishop Pudsey’s charter of 1179, confirmed in 1565, as a weekly market on Saturday and three yearly fairs on the feasts of St Cuthbert in September and March and on Whit Monday, each continuing for two days. In 1610 the bishop of Durham brought a suit in chancery against the burgesses and recovered from them the markets and fairs, which he afterwards leased to the corporation for a rent of £20 yearly until they were purchased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1860. Durham has never been noted for any particular trade; and the attempts to introduce the manufacture of cloth and wool in the 17th and 18th centuries were failures. The manufacture of carpets was begun in 1814.

DURHAM, a city and the county-seat of Durham county, North Carolina, U.S.A., in a township of the same name, 25 m. N.W. of Raleigh. Pop. (1900) 6679, of whom 2241 were negroes; (1910) 18,241; of the township (1900) 19,055; (1910) 27,606. Adjacent to the city and also in the township are East Durham and West Durham (both unincorporated), which industrially are virtually part of the city. Durham is served by the Southern, the Seaboard Air Line, the Norfolk & Western, and the Durham & Southern railways, the last a short line connecting at Apex and Dunn, N.C., respectively with the main line of the Seaboard and the Atlantic Coast Line railways. Durham is nearly surrounded by hills. Its streets are shaded by elms. The city is the seat of Trinity College (Methodist Episcopal, South), opened in 1851 as a normal college, growing out of an academy called Union Institute, which was established in the north-western part of Randolph county in 1838 and was incorporated in 1841. In 1852 the college was empowered to grant degrees; in 1856 it became the property of the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; in 1859 it received its present name; and in 1892 it was removed to a park near Durham, included in 1901 in the corporate limits of the city. A new charter was adopted in 1903, and a law school was organized in 1904. The college has received many gifts from the Duke family of Durham. In 1908 its endowment and property were valued at about $1,198,400, and the number of its students was 288. Although not officially connected with the college, the South Atlantic Quarterly, founded by a patriotic society of the college and published at Durham since 1902, is controlled and edited by members of the college faculty. The North Carolina Journal of Education and the Papers of the Trinity College Historical Society also are edited by members of the college faculty. The Trinity Park school is preparatory for the college. Near the city are Watts hospital (for whites) and Lincoln hospital (for negroes). Durham’s chief economic interest is in the manufacture of granulated smoking tobacco, for which it became noted after the Civil War. In the city are two large factories and store houses of the American Tobacco Company. The tobacco industry was founded by W.T. Blackwell (1839-1904) and Washington Duke (1820-1905). The city also manufactures cigars, cigarettes, snuff, a fertilizer having tobacco dust as the base, cotton goods, lumber, window sashes, blinds, drugs and hosiery. Durham has a large trade with the surrounding region. The town of Durham was incorporated in 1869, and became the county-seat of the newly-erected county in 1881, and in 1899 was chartered as a city. Its growth is due to the tobacco and cotton industries. In the Bennett house, at Durham Station, near the city, General J.E. Johnston surrendered on the 26th of April 1865 the Confederate army under his command to General W.T. Sherman.

DURIAN (Malay, duri, a thorn), the fruit of Durio zibethinus, a tree of the natural order Bombaceae, which attains a height of 70 or 80 ft., has oblong, tapering leaves, rounded at the base, and yellowish-green flowers, and bears a general resemblance to the elm. The durio is cultivated in Sumatra, Java, Celebes and the Moluccas, and northwards as far as Mindanao in the Philippines; also in the Malay Peninsula, in Tenasserim, on the Bay of Bengal, to 14° N. lat., and in Siam to the 13th and 14th parallels. The fruit is spherical, and 6 to 8 in. in diameter, approaching the size of a large coco-nut; it has a hard external husk or shell, and is completely armed with strong pyramidal tubercles, meeting one another at the base, and terminating in sharp thorny points; these sometimes inflict severe injuries on persons upon whom the fruit may chance to fall when ripe. On dividing the fruit at the joins of the carpels, where the spines arch a little, it is found to contain five oval cells, each filled with a cream-coloured, glutinous, smooth pulp, in which are embedded from one to five seeds about the size of chestnuts. The pulp and the seeds, which latter are eaten roasted, are the edible parts of the fruit. With regard to the taste of the pulp, A.R. Wallace remarks, “A rich butter-like custard, highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry and other incongruities;... it is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is.” The fruit, especially when not fresh from the tree, has, notwithstanding, a most offensive smell, which has been compared to that of rotten onions or of putrid animal matter. The Dyaks of the Sarawak river in Borneo esteem the durian above all other fruit, eat it unripe both cooked and raw, and salt the pulp for use as a relish with rice.